Victory Soap v. 2.0

In all fairness, this description of Oregon applies to Portland and the college towns. Of course, like any other state, that comprises the bulk of the population.

The part I hail from is much more palatable.

Do you go about telling people how beautiful and green your state is? And that you grow REAL pine trees shaped like Christmas trees there? If so, I demand that you stop immediately.

(To be fair, everyone from north of the Mason-Dixon line has made that claim about up-north pine trees. It's like some sort of point of pride.)

I was born in Oregon, and currently live only a few miles north of the Oregon-Washington border. Ken is pretty much right; the northwest corner of the state, over to Portland and the Cascades, down to around the Eugene area, is officially Ga-Ga Country.

One of my relatives (a life long resident of southwestern Oregon) once opined that we should send ninjas into that region, and take out all of the college professors. At the time, I thought that a trifle extreme (I prefer exile to North Korea myself), but I sympathized with his feelings. Right now, I'd add overzealous prosecutors to that list....and send them to Waziristan in lieu of NoKo.

And this isn't the only silliness to come out of the (formerly) Great State of Oregon. I remember that Oregon DOT (or Revenue Department, maybe) once seriously considered requiring all cars to have built-in transponders, with GPS receivers, so they could charge drivers for using state roads....by the mile. That study lasted long enough to get into the papers. Although I'll bet good money that the concept papers are sitting in a prominent place on some bureaucrat's desk, just waiting.....

And I must admit.....I carefully avoid going into Oregon as much as possible, even though they have no sales taxes. Especially around the Portland area. The place is just way too wacky.

BTW, the eastern half of Oregon tends to be more down to earth....and is just as pretty, as Ken aludes to. Not to mention a whole lot less populated. It's worth a visit. If you like small towns and lots of scenery, that is.

Heh! Sorry, Andrea, but Washington is "The Evergreen State". Our motto is "Keep Washington Green. Spend money!"

"...its intensely artistic and cultured cities where all the tvs are turned to Ovation and Trio and the people all talk in perfect iambic pentameter and only drink free-trade organically-grown coffee."

Heh. I lived in Portland from 1992-2000, having moved there from Houston, but was born and raised for 20 years in the Boise area. At first I thought it was such a "cool" place, but soon found out that it is all so tiresomely contrived (shudder, gag).

Am now, like TRJ, just across the River in the somewhat more conservative no-man's land, where we're pretty much ignored by Olympia and only meaningful to Stumptown in terms of traffic.

Those poor boys, though. PC zero tolerance runs amok once again. I just hope and pray that kind of thing doesn't seep too far eastward as I'm seriously considering moving back to the land of my birth.

I do have to say, though, that the PNW, hell, the whole NW is absolutely beautiful, no doubt about it.

Oh, and I think I know which case you're talking about from 1995: Linda Stangel. At least that's the one I remember.

That's it, that's the one -- though I'd forgotten that the police had taken her up the cliff.

I've been through Oregon several times. Not all that impressed, as mountains & tall trees make me claustrophobic, even if they are pretty. Obviously,
this feeling applies to more than Oregon.

Maybe I could stand the BetterThanThou artsy-fartsy socialism if they didn't act as if THEY were responsible for the beauty of the land.

Evidently they're stupid & vindictive, too. Scary.

Arrogance run rampant. No thanks.

Naw, Ken, not quite. Portland metro's only a million and change, and Eugene and Corvallis together don't exceed 500k, so altogether they have not quite half the state's population.

Still a lot of damned hippies.

On the other hand, this school-related stupidity is, in all honesty, just the fault of the local school administrators - I can't imagine that happening in Portland, squishy as it is.

I can just see local idiots in McMinnville falling into that stupidity (and that DA won't be happy come next election if he goes forward with it). Definitely wouldn't happen east of the Cascades or south of Eugene, though.

(And the socialism? As much to be blamed on Californian immigrants as natives.

Turned LA or SF into a socialist wasteland?

That's okay, you can move north and ruin Portland and Seattle, too!)

As Sig suggests, the main problem with Oregon and Oregonians is that they let in the Californians. (My late mother-in-law was an Old Oregonian - ancestors born on the Oregon Trail and all that. Great lady, Old School - emphatically not an old hippie type.) I suspect the Old Oregonians are cursing their folly in not setting up vigilante groups at the California border to keep them out at gunpoint.

Oregon is beautiful. I lived there for five years and was certainly sorry to leave that landscape (and Powell's bookstore). When we left in 2003 Californication was reaching its more mature stages, and the natural subsequent process of Mexifornication was revving up. A brief visit in 2006 suggested that these processes were continuing apace.

I'll give Oregonians credit, though, for voting down through referendums really tyrannical stuff like that heinous law allowing permanent seizure of property of anyone suspected of being involved in any way in criminal drug-related activity.

I suspect the Old Oregonians are cursing their folly in not setting up vigilante groups at the California border to keep them out at gunpoint.

And the Washingtonians as well.....I was born in Oregon, but grew up in Washington, and watched the Californians occupy our land. If I'd been of age, I'd have volunteered for the vigilantes.

California out of Cascadia!

Parts of Northern California (the physical part) are mighty sweet, though. If you guys ever rise up and throw off the Californian yoke, you might as well go for a little imperialist expansion southward.

No, Moira, what California needs (and I've advocated it for years) is to be split east/west (not north/south as idiots would say). More specifically, it needs to be split between the coastal hippie/leftist infested territory and the rest of us.

Oh, and Andrea, I actually dislike pine trees as Christmas trees. I like Doug Fir.

Of course, those grow primarily in Oregon and Washington.